Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.
Charles Benjamin Amirkhanian is an American composer. He is a percussionist, sound poet, and radio producer of Armenian origin. He is mostly known for his electroacoustic and text-sound music. Performance artist Laurie Anderson praises his work: "The art of audio collage has been reinvented here... A brilliant sense of imaginary space."
The ANS synthesizer is a photoelectronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957. The technological basis of his invention was the method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography, which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the opposite goal—synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound spectrogram.
Trevor Wishart is an English composer, based in York. Wishart has contributed to composing with digital audio media, both fixed and interactive. He has also written extensively on the topic of what he terms "sonic art", and contributed to the design and implementation of software tools used in the creation of digital music; notably, the Composers Desktop Project.
John Palmer (1959) is a British composer, pianist and musicologist.
Szkieve is the stage name of Dimitri della Faille. Szkieve is a pioneering ambient musician and new media artist. He has been performing electronic experimental and noise music since 1997. In 2017, he was co-awarded the prestigious Golden Nica Prix Ars Electronica in digital musics and sound art.
Birmingham ElectroAcoustic Sound Theatre, or as it is more commonly known, BEAST, is a sound diffusion system specifically designed for the performance of electroacoustic music. It is a long-running project of the Electroacoustic Music Studios at the University of Birmingham, founded in 1982 under the directorship of Jonty Harrison. Since 2014 BEAST has been directed by Scott Wilson, along with Annie Mahtani and James Carpenter as technical director. Simply put, it consists of a set of loudspeakers connected to a computer, usually controlled by a diffusion console.
Erdem Helvacioglu is an electronic musician from Turkey. He has collaborated with artists Mick Karn, Kevin Moore, John Wilson, Kazuya Ishigami, and Saadet Turkoz. In addition to his work as an electronic musician, Erdem also composes music for theatre, film and multimedia productions, and produces for popular and rock music bands in Turkey. He has received numerous international awards including prizes from the Luigi Russolo and Insulae Electronicae Electroacoustic Music Competitions.
Lutz Glandien is a Berlin-based German avant garde composer and musician. He has composed a number of classical and electroacoustic pieces, released four solo albums, and collaborated with English percussionist Chris Cutler to record two acclaimed avant-rock albums, Domestic Stories (1992) and p53 (1996).
Marco Oppedisano is an American guitarist and composer whose compositions focus on the innovative use of electric guitar in the genre of electroacoustic music. His musique concrète/acousmatic music compositions have utilized multitrack recording and extended performance techniques for electric guitar, nylon string guitar and electric bass. In addition to musique concrète, compositions by Oppedisano also consist of "live" electric guitar in combination with a fixed playback of various electronic, acoustic and sampled sounds.
Simon Cousins is an English singer-songwriter and musician, who was a member of Liverpool indie country rock band The Onset and folk rockers Ophiuchus. He studied music at the Liverpool Music College and has a degree in philosophy from Liverpool University. His solo work is in an acoustic, folk / country genre, described by Tim Peacock of Whisperin and Hollerin' online magazine as "showcasing a fluid finger-picking style and a gentle, unobtrusive voice which nonetheless carries a determined presence." Seph Ong of Glasswerk National stated that Cousins' songs were "derived from real life experience" and that as a performer he "presents a series of tales that gradually unravel to build a story of the mystery of life." Cousins performed at the Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, England, in 2010, 2011 and 2016.
Petri Kuljuntausta is a Finnish composer, musician, sound artist and author of three books on electronic music and sound art. Since the 1990s he has belonged to a new generation of composers in Finland interested in experimental and electronic music.
Natasha Barrett is a British contemporary music composer specialising in electroacoustic art music. Her compositional aesthetics are derived from acousmatic issues. In addition to acousmatic concert music, she composes for instruments, live electronics, sound installations, multi-media works, real-time computer music improvisation, has made soundscapes for exhibitions, and music for contemporary dance and theater. Since 2000 her work has been influenced by spatialisation as a musical parameter, and the projection of 3-D sound-fields. She currently lives in Norway.
Bob Pritchard is a composer and teacher. His creative work includes experimental concert music, interactive music and video pieces, sound installations, direct synthesis, video/film, radiophonic works, and software development. His music is represented by AMP.
Priscilla McLean is an American composer, performer, video artist, writer, and music reviewer.
Marc Battier is a French composer and musicologist.
Rozalie Hirs is a Dutch composer of contemporary classical music and a poet. The principal concerns of her work are the adventure of listening, reading, and the imagination.
Igor Lintz Maués; also spelled Igor Lintz-Maues; is a composer and sound artist born December 8, 1955 in São Paulo, Brazil, and since the end of the 1980s living in Vienna, Austria.
Ines Reingold-Tali, known by her stage names Inéz, Inèz or Inez, is an Estonian new media artist, musician, composer and writer on sound art, noise, electronic music, glitch and digital culture. She lives and works in Finland. Since the mid-1990s she has belonged to a new generation of composers in Finland interested in experimental interdisciplinary art projects and electronic music. Her repertoire includes electroacoustic chamber music, experimental, electronic and film music. She has been engaged in commissioned projects in the fields of electroacoustic, contemporary chamber music and experimental music, in different audiovisual art projects, video art, poetry, performance, theater, short films and radio-art. Her compositions have been broadcast internationally on various radio stations and television channels in many European countries, Australia, Canada and the USA. Her works have been published on solo-albums and international compilations by various labels, incl. K-tel International, FG Music/Naxos, YOCOMA, YAP and Charm of Sound. She has been nominated to participate in various international festivals, exhibitions and conferences, Florence Biennale 2007 in Italy, LACDA International Juried Competition Winners Show (award) at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art in USA 2007, 30e Festival International des Musiques Syntheses 2000 in France and international conferences on musicology, among others.
Mon Amour, Mon Parapluie is a short film directed by Giada Dobrzenska and featuring cameo appearances by William Gibson and Douglas Coupland. The film was nominated for nine categories of British Columbia's Leo Awards, including one to Studio X for sound editing. It was an official 2007 selection at Big Sur International Film Festival.
